I hope you don’t mind my adding a business perspective. In business time is money.

While my bookkeeping duties consume my time, the amount of time required to solve a simple problem has reached the point of insanity. Making a frigging phone call, got so bad, I started tracking my time.

To date, the worst was an AT&T billing error. We had a choice, we could pay $3,000.00 to keep our company’s phones and internet lines on, or I could get the billing error corrected. I picked up the phone and dialed. I was on hold, pushing buttons, talking to machines, disconnected, and transferred. Every time I reached a person, they made me explain the whole complicated problem before telling me to call another number, or transferring me, or promising a return call that never came. I spoke to AT&T people in India, several different states and the Philippines.

By the time AT&T put me through to someone who could resolved the problem, I’d spent 11 hours on the phone. That is not a typo – eleven hours!

Utility companies, banks, credit card processors and government agency’s voice systems drive up OUR company’s payroll costs. This is NOT efficiency – it is plain and simple theft.

Your father is upset because a system is stealing his time, the same way these companies are stealing money from my boss.

Oops, I got carried away. Obviously, your essay struck a nerve.